Here are the middle two of the four total quartets Anatoly Alexandrov penned during his career. I've not found any biographical details on these works, but both were composed back-to-back in Tbilisi, Georgia during WWII. Both volumes (pocket scores) were in pretty poor condition, but 99.9% of it is at least still legible (one particularly bad spot is the last few cello notes in SQ #3's third movement, pg. 71. I'd guess that the faded-out notes are supposed to be G# and F#...).

Anatoly Nikolayevich ALEXANDROV
String Quartet no. 2, op. 54 (1942)

Alexandrov, A. - String Quartet no. 2, op. 54 (1942).pdf

String Quartet no. 3, op. 55 (1942)

Alexandrov, A. - String Quartet no. 3, op. 55 (1942).pdf

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Here's a rather rare quartet score by Jozef Koffler, a Polish composer of the early 1900s who is somewhat famous for being the first amongst his countrymen to utilize twelve-tone techniques. Unfortunately, none of that is on display in this work, a set of folklorist pieces that were written to conform with the demands of the Soviet socialist realist strictures that were imposed on artists and musicians in western Ukraine after the Red Army invaded in the early 1940s. Even more sad is that this was his final opus number. Just a few years later, he was killed in the Holocaust and many of his works were lost. A really thorough article on his overall career can be read at:

Here's a quartet (in a theme/variations form) from one of the lesser-heard members of the Armenian Mighty Handful (to be sure, maybe almost all of them qualify as 'lesser-heard' nowadays). An old recording can be found at http://classical-music-online.net/ :

Edvard Mik'aeli MIRZOYAN (Armenia)
String Quartet (1947)

Mirzoyan - String Quartet (1947).pdf

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This early Soviet-era composer is mostly known as a composer of incidental/film music and solo piano works. The latter have been quite well-represented in this forum's Scriabinist/Russian-1920s thread and on IMSLP. Towards the end of his career, between 1944 and 1947, he composed a string quartet each year, this one being the first. It appears that the second one was also published, but it's exceedingly rare. As with other Soviet-era study scores I've accessed that the published before the 1950s, a number of the pages were blurred, badly faded, or marred with printing-press imperfections, so a read-through may require a little bit of guesswork and a lot of zooming in.

Leonid Alexeyevich POLOVINKIN
String Quartet no. 1 (1944)

Polovinkin - String Quartet no. 1 (1944).pdf

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Here are three quartets by Vasily Shirinsky, a composer who studied under Myaskovsky but was more famous as a violinist in the Beethoven Quartet and the dedicatee of Shostakovich's 11th quartet. I've seen it written somewhere that he wrote nine quartets but based on the dates, I suspect that there are only six numbered ones. Aside from that, all I've seen is a string quartet suite based on Dagestan folk songs. He was composed a piano quintet in the 1920s and a late-career piano quartet, both of which have scores. As for the early three numbered quartets, they were all published by Universal-Wien and are very difficult to locate. No. 2 was shared here previously. The best I could do with no. 1 was to find a parts set (which will likely be shared in the future after some clean-up). As for no. 3, Worldcat reports that a scant handful of American libraries have parts sets, but none are near at hand. Anyhow, enjoy.

Vasily Petrovich SHIRINSKY
String Quartet no. 4, op. 19 (1940)

Shirinsky - String Quartet no. 4, op. 19 (1940).pdf

String Quartet no. 5, op. 27 (1953)

Shirinsky - String Quartet no. 5, op. 27 (1953).pdf

String Quartet no. 6 (1958)

Shirinsky - String Quartet no. 6 (1958).pdf

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This is perhaps not the right place for this query, but in any case, can someone more in the know advise?

I am considering ordering a series of quartets from the BnF in Paris. On their order form, they state that commercial use of materials incurs extra charge, on top of the cost for reproduction.

Now, I personally wouldn't be using the quartets for commercial use, but I hope to get them recorded by a quartet I am in contact with. Also, considering the fact that, eventually (presumably, and as has happened a lot over the years) the scores will be digitized and be in the public domain (on IMSLP, for example), does that mean I would have to pay the said commercial charge or not?

4candles wrote:Now, I personally wouldn't be using the quartets for commercial use, but I hope to get them recorded by a quartet I am in contact with. Also, considering the fact that, eventually (presumably, and as has happened a lot over the years) the scores will be digitized and be in the public domain (on IMSLP, for example), does that mean I would have to pay the said commercial charge or not?

My initial reaction would be to suggest that if the recordings will be sold (i.e. commercial use ) the commercial charge would be applicable.

Here's an early quartet by Yuri Levitin, one of Shostakovich's most prolific students. His Wikipedia bio states that he composed about one dozen quartets, but there's a 1993 Kompozitor/Moscow volume containing his 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th quartets.

However...at the same time, I've never laid eyes on library listings for any of his first four numbered quartets.

Yuri Abramovich LEVITIN (Ukraine)
String Quartet no. 5, op. 29 (1948)

Levitin - String Quartet no. 5, op. 29 (1948).pdf

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